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at the edge of the ancient tank. He guards the waterline. Bellows and roars from the jungle behind me. I know when to retreat, where to go to cool off with a Lion Stout. I have my own bush trails to stamp before the sun gilds the trees.

he did visit Ravello, walk the belvedere terrace and stare out at the divine coast. He hiked up from his Amalfi rest camp, a switchback retreat towards the end of the volume I’m reading. There’s even a faded pic of the terrace and what looks to be the same iron curl of railing where I leaned out a week ago. Catching up with the story as it unfolds, out on a tropic balcony now, four thousand miles from the yellow stone and marble of Ravello. And I almost left this book behind unfinished, baggage overloaded and the feeling it should find a new reader to follow its footsteps through Italy. I might never have known Spike made it. Sweet is chance.

On the Good Life under these trees. He must have been a disciplined scribe, to turn away from azure sky-gazing and the silky lure of the pool.

I’ll take a nibble on another limoncello. There’s time for a last walk on the terrace.

and cashed out at Monte Cassino. I’ve been reading his memoirs, shadowing his Bren carrier in my rental Opel on the autostrada. He made it to Pompeii and walked the lava lanes alone, unlike me, but he didn’t stroll out on the infinity terrace at Ravello. That’s where the scribes hid away, sipping limoncello in paradise. They weren’t dragging howitzers or brewing up tea composite in mess tins. I never guessed that Spike was a full-war soldier. He’s the real deal.

and by the alleyways found myself at the Turf. I didn’t linger on this shore, day marching on and many puddles to swerve before nightfall.

over Airmen’s Bridge, down by the ruins and along the banks. I made it to the Perch and yelped at the price of a pint, wish I’d known Riverman with his barge and glass-walled wheelhouse, his would have been the better shelter, watching the rains blow in over the meadow. I’ve never had so much to juggle in life, so many rewardless and pressing decisions with no last measure of conviction to make them. Where’s shuffling Riverman with his gave-it-all up glare, softening to a smile as he understands, beckons me aboard to sit and stare over the soon-coming rain-patter ripples on river’s slide.

in love or money, you just have to keep taking part, pelting down the track like a maniac. And when the day’s work is done, head on out to your playground.

has its maddening limitations…with meandering compensations.

they’ll have to be smarter than us. Their superintelligence would gust them off on uncharted, unguessable pathways. The profs at the futurology foundations worry about human obsolescence and machine supreme but I’m trying to look on the bright side: those bots might get into daydreaming and lounging and 1,000-yard gazing. They could start watching the treeline blur, looking for the connections in the atom weave, even craving an altered state. Bots gone beatnik. Bots as life/love-bedazzled as we organics. Introspection as a consequence of self-reflective consciousness.